Predictive Coding Goes Mainstream

For several years, legal technology writers (and e-discovery vendors) have been touting “predictive coding” as a solution to the problem of skyrocketing e-discovery costs. If you do not read legal tech journals, you may have missed the earlier discussion, but chances are you heard about it in 2012: the use of computer technology to leverage human review of a sample set of electronically stored information (ESI) to a larger data set, which software analyzes but humans do not review. If you told yourself that you need to find out what “predictive coding” is all about, you were right. In contrast with 2011, when “trade” discussion abounded but no judicial decision addressed predictive coding, five reported cases in 2012 qualify as a flurry of activity. Predictive coding “firsts” arrived one after another last year: